Category Archives: Math

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Solforge Forgewatch Invitational Top 8 Statistics

Solforge

Curiously following the Solforge Forgewatch Invitational, I decided to calculate some statistics about the Top 8’s card choices and deck types. I found the results rather interesting and some of them concerning. Important note: These numbers come from a small sample size (one tournament, eight players), are for a developing game with many new cards recently added, and are calculated with quick and dirty math. Thus, the math below is more useful for observing trends (Uterra is really popular!) rather than exact calculations (Deathweaver had 20.3% more representation than it should have!). With that being said, let’s get on with it!

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Ascension Strategy

Hedron-Cannon

Having been a strong fan of Ascension for over a year now, it seems like this blog is overdue for an Ascension strategy article.  This week I’ll start with some basic math about starting hands.  Note that these probabilities will still apply even with the newest base set, as the energy shard allows you to draw a card when you play it.

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Small World Best Race and Power Combinations – Part 2

Small World

Continuing my Small World best race and power combinations, this week I’m analyzing and discussing the results from last week’s post found here.  While the numbers from last week were all well and good, they only considered offensive abilities, and did not look at abilities that provided non-numerical benefits.  Here’s where we are going to go into what powers combo well with which races, and also consider what the numbers from last week actually mean if we’re trying to get more gold than the other guy.

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Small World Best Race and Power Combinations – Part 1

Small World

I’ve gotten to enjoy Small World by Days of Wonder recently and really appreciate the simple mechanics that still provided an engaging experience with plenty of strategic and tactical options.  Looking at the random combinations of powers and races got me curious as to what some of the best race and power combinations were in Small World.

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Risk Legacy Odds – Basic Combat Math with a Twist, Part 3

Risk Legacy

As a wrap-up to my basic combat math series for Risk Legacy odds (see part 1 and part 2), I’m going to looking at the expected losses per attack for each side, as well as exactly how much a bunker makes a territory harder to take.
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Risk Legacy Odds – Basic Combat Math with a Twist, Part 1

Risk Legacy

After buying Risk: Legacy (by Hasbro) a few weeks ago, I’ve finally gotten a chance to play it.  The base game itself is very simple and I was a bit disappointed at first, but the large number of changes that happen after every game (or even during the game) drastically change things.  I’m impressed enough and, more importantly, excited to play more.  Of course, now I want to see how the math works.

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Conquest of Nerath Basic Unit Combat Math

Conquest (1)

I’ve recently gotten the chance to play Wizard of the Coast’s board game Conquest of Nerath (by Wizards of the Coast) and really enjoyed my experience.  After playing a few games, the knee-jerk reaction of many of the players was that Dragons were the superior unit, even given their cost.  Let’s see what the math has to say.

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Savage Worlds Ace

Savage Worlds

I recently played a Warhammer 40k adaption using the Savage Worlds game system by the Pinnacle Entertainment Group, and they had an interesting game mechanic that I had not run into before – the Savage Worlds Ace system. I was attempting to optimize my character’s combat performance, and my knee-jerk reaction was that Trademark weapon (which provides a flat +1 bonus) was less useful than increasing the die type. However, there were two factors that I hadn’t dealt with before in RPG’s that made it an interesting challenge to optimize.

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